Worth vs Price Historically - Weekly Blog # 821

 

Mike Lipper’s Monday Morning Musings

 

Worth vs Price Historically

 

Editors: Frank Harrison 1997-2018, Hylton Phillips-Page 2018

 

Merchants Needed

Despite what many believe is the oldest profession, growers and herders were the first tribes to survive. As both tribes frequently had more of their own product than necessary, they needed to exchange their excess production with members of the other tribe. Both tribes were skilled in their own production but did not fully understand the other tribe’s costs. Initially, the agreed price was in terms of quantities between the two commodities (x sheep for y bales of cotton).

 

Fairly quickly, solely mathematical terms of exchange (3x for 5y) became insufficient in terms of defining the starting quantity and conditions of transfer. The exchanging parties often did not know or trust the other party. Thus, there was a need for a middleman to determine an agreed price between buyer and seller. The middleman would necessarily be known or recognized by the would-be traders as someone who could be reasonably trusted and was capable of developing accepted terms of trade.

 

With buyers and sellers geographically separate, both in terms of distance and possibly language, the value of a somewhat trusted third party became even more important. Still further elements became essential, a recognized type of money, or later, credit.

 

Over time, the third parties evolved into merchant houses or merchant banks. When dealing across borders and cultures the participants were often happier if the money or credit exchanged was issued by a bank, especially if the bank backed by a government with a wealthy family behind it. At this point these transactions utilized money in the form of coins convertible into known quantities of precious metals.

 

Foreign Exchange

When the western world was ruled by Rome, the value was understood to represent an understood bundle of goods and services. This worked well when the government controlled the coinage. A problem arose when government expenses for war or extravagant expenses rose beyond an acceptable level of taxes paid. A conflict that exists today.

 

Governments addressed the problem by gradually debasing the currency, such as substituting copper and other base metals for precious metals. As governments did this differently, the purchasing power of their money became dissimilar to one another, both in ancient times and today.

 

Those who suffer from a liberal arts education are taught incorrectly that the English Magna Carta was forced by the public on the English king. The real cause resulted from the Barons revolting against the increased tax load on their land. The increased tax load was caused by the expense of the Crusades and the ransom paid for the release of their king who was held hostage in Europe.

 

Today our federal government is changing the rate of taxation and how it is applied to both income and estates. Since foreigners derive earnings from activities and trade in the United States, they react by reducing their exposure to the US dollar, reducing its value. This is currently an issue for an investment committee on which I sit. In looking at our portfolio and foreign expenses at the last meeting, I suggested we begin tracking the changing value of the dollar. It is also something I need to do in looking at portfolio selection.

 

A Historic Portfolio Change

(Please do not take this discussion as a recommendation, as that requires careful analysis of the needs of an account. T. Rowe Price is held in a personal account and some client accounts.)

 

The man, T. Rowe Price, started his investment counsel firm in 1937, a year of a few months of gains in a period of stagflation. Mr. Price was one of a few managers investing in growth stocks at the time. Sometime after the conclusion of WWII he became concerned that the inflationary habit had taken over management of the economy and by 1979 he was disturbed about how the US was doing. He started managing money to graduate from FDR’s New Deal, implementing a philosophy he called New ERA in a new fund concerned about government led inflation. In 1979 George Roach became his assistant, and I believe in 1997 he became the portfolio manager. He later became President of the firm. George kept with Mr. Prices’ concerns, but he allowed the rest of the firm to continue with their growth stock orientation, which produced a very commendable record.

 

Prior to December 2023

The T. Rowe Price New Era Fund was managed with extreme consciousness of inflation. This translated into investing in common stocks of companies expected to rise in the future as inflation rose by investing in assets, not earnings. Most followers of the New Era fund viewed it as a commodities fund because that is what the portfolio looked like.

 

Shinwoo Kim has been the portfolio manager for New Era since 2021 and has been with T. Rowe since 2009. He has proclaimed that commodities have been and are in a long bear market ever since he became portfolio manager, but that changed in December. On the first of December hea as portfolio manager of New Era affected a considerable change in its portfolio, returning it to Mr. Prices’ basic concerns.  

 

Kim feels the US has migrated to a world where inflation and excessive federal government spending is the principal driver of investments. After ten years he has concluded, and convinced the rest of his investment committee, that the commodity cycle is about to change. He expects future investments to benefit from cyclical earnings growth, which will produce better results than ownership in highly valued assets.

As a natural resource fund New Era has not done poorly, compounding at +2.97% compared to the average Natural Resources Fund’s +2.69% over the past ten years. I suspect this outcome was largely the result of its yield, not earnings or Price/Earnings expansion and/or P/E expansion. (The result was not measured against the changing value of the dollar.)

Economists have tagged the price of copper as Dr. Copper. As the price of copper has performed better than most economists over time. The use of copper by the electrical/electronic industries and construction activity gives its use a cyclical growth trend. Other structural changes expected to benefit the portfolio include Uranium and US shale production. The fund believes the long-term outlook for production in Marcellus/Utica as well as Permian is understated. Additional attractive areas for investment include industrial gases and pipelines. (This brings to mind Berkshire Hathaway- a position owned in our personal and managed accounts)

 

 

 

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The Confidence Game - Weekly Blog # 701

 

Mike Lipper’s Monday Morning Musings

The Confidence Game

Editors: Frank Harrison 1997-2018, Hylton Phillips-Page 2018 –

The Rules of Life

Whether voluntary or not, by taking our next breadth we display confidence in knowing it is beneficial for us. Consciously investing relies on a series of confidences:

• That we can make a difference having a favorable impact.
• That we have the skills needed to achieve the desired goal. 

When we apply these hurdles to investing we are applying the following articles of faith. 

• That on balance the positive trends we see can be extrapolated into the future.
• That perceived negative threats will be moderated, or at the least don’t represent insurmountable hurdles.
• That we have enough skill or luck to execute. 

The range of executions vary from radical active changes to passive acceptance that we are in an acceptable condition for the moment. Regardless of our decisions, we are making choices that affect us and others.

Our level of confidence impacts where on the spectrum of actions we are likely to reside. I sense a number of people investing as fiduciaries or for themselves losing confidence, causing them to contemplate making contrary investment decisions. In addressing these signs of change I rely on history as a guide. This is a blog about investing for the long-term and is not an instrument of political criticism.

What’s Changed

The ways policy decisions are made and communicated has changed dramatically since the mid1930s. Both Hitler and FDR were expert on the use of Radio speeches or “fireside chats” to move their populations into accepting war as the only answer for their ultimate protection. Other political leaders did not fully grasp this change. (Wendell Willkie counted heavily on his positive relations with the major newspaper publishers and editorial boards. Unfortunately, his support was lacking in a couple of midwestern states, costing him delegate votes at the 1940 Republican convention. My ever-vigilant brother noted that I misspelled his name in the last blog.)

JFK’s telegenic personality vs.. the dour faced Richard Nixon cost him many young voters. LBJ, President Kennedy’s successor, had little choice in running his own election campaign due to constant negative television coverage of the Vietnam war.

Donald Trump had the benefit of a more intense polling, harkening back to the packed and enthusiastic crowds attending Revivalist meetings 100 years earlier. He generated these crowds in many states and communities where network television was not a believable presence. 

Throughout history, the one constant has been the increased speed of communication. Currently, most people get their political news through their computers. This was particularly true during the “lockdowns”. Two critical differences from the television network reporting of earlier years are:

1. The absence of the FCC’s mandated “fairness doctrine”, giving some acknowledgement to the opposition’s point of view, has filled the news hole with paying commercials.
2. Today, social media appeals to their perceived audience and rarely takes time to give a balanced view. The commercial art of visuals has also greatly improved. With a global platform of news and uncensored opinion the world is constantly being “informed”. 

Confidence in the US is Changing

As is often the case, the US bond market is directionally ahead of the US stock market. Many investors outside the US are very conscious of our economic/financial problems. As is customary for good investors, they hedge their bets. If they are high quality fixed income investors the standard way to hedge their currency risk is to buy US Treasuries. On a secular basis the foreign exchange value has been regularly declining vs other “strong” currencies, in part due to our expanding deficit. Markets adjust to perceived risks and in order to offset the currency risk the yield demanded for US paper in the global markets has been higher. However, in the last couple of years the perceived risks in other currencies seemed lower and their yields were consequently lower than those in the US.  

A couple weeks ago this attitude changed, with the yield on US paper rising and prices declining. This “shook-up” the equity markets which were selling at record levels. As almost all traded markets are priced off other markets, if Treasury yields rise the future return in other markets will also have to rise to remain competitive. Consequently, other fixed income rates will rise and if fixed income yields go up equity prices will go down. Market analysts are very conscious as to the inverse price trends of high-quality bonds vs high price/earnings ratios stocks e.g., FAANG and other tech stocks.

Causes of Declining Confidence 

 There is no mathematical formula for confidence. Psychologically, investors consider many different factors important to them. The reason for the long review of political communication is that government is one of the major contributors to individual and institutional investor confidence. In a simplistic model, governments have two broad buckets of policies and executions. Using this approach I will briefly list some of the critical elements in each bucket.

Policies addressing the following challenges:

Belief in US promises

Big Central Government

Borders

Business Relations

COVID

Inflation

Military Leadership

Political Leadership

Taxes

Executions

Afghanistan – For 20 years we have hired both US contractors and local people, including military and police forces, to keep our commitment relatively small. We made actual and implied promises of the eventual relocation of these people to the US and broke these promises with the way the US pulled out. (Many other countries may be questioning the steadfastness of the protection we are providing them. Are they at risk of high social spending in the US leading to financial constraints which might result in a hasty and poorly planned/executed retreat?)

Big Central Government - The main reason it took 12 years between The Declaration of Independence and the issuance of the US Constitution/Bill of Rights was the fear of tyranny by a strong central government. The result was a Constitution limiting the power of the central government, with most power left to the states. In two clever ways the Founding Fathers deemed that the Capital should be built in a swamp, having high humidity in the summer and cold during the winter. Furthermore, under President Washington the original cabinet had only four members: the secretaries of State, Treasury, War, and the Attorney General. Currently, there are 24 members plus 9 Principal officers. The current attempt to have a national law governing how elections are handled, considering individual states have that responsibility, is just what our founders were afraid might happen.

Borders protect and enhance all states. With most of the developed world facing shrinking populations, the US needs more workers and future students to continue our growth. However, they should be people who will contribute to our society, as most legal immigrants have in the past. We must control all our borders to make this happen.

The government’s role concerning businesses should be kept as small as possible. Businesses are not licensed or set up to serve the social needs of a community. They should choose to be good citizens, as it is good for their business and their people. Misapplying the anti-trust statues will reduce employment and send more jobs overseas. Practical companies, including professional practices, have already established foreign production capabilities to supply both US and international clients. I often see new CEOs of global companies coming from beyond our borders. They have the experience of running smaller versions of their US companies, whereas domestic candidates have not experienced managing a complete unit. We need these executives working with us rather than for international competitors.

The COVID pandemic was amazingly well handled in the production of vaccines. Compared to other countries, the deployment of the vaccines and related regulations and services was not as good. (It may or may not be important that the deployment was under a different administration than the initial production.) My real concern is whether most children, particularly those with special educational needs, will ever catch up with students educated beyond our borders. Longer-term, this will have an enormous impact on our long-term wealth production.

Increasing inflation has many causes, some caused by the present administration. I Increases in living costs are most painful for lower wage people, including the current rise in the cost of gas, with more expected for this winter’s heating. The increases are due to the US government restricting the growth of the petroleum production and pipelines. In addition, the cost of increased regulations is forcing businesses to add expensive people, which customers will eventually pay for through higher prices or lower wage increases and job numbers.

For some time, Military Leadership has been heavily influenced by relatively junior generals or admirals being promoted because of a perceived relationship with critical members of Congress or the White House. This may be why the President “didn’t hear” any objections to the way the pull out of Afghanistan was planned. The Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs, by calling his opposite number to assure him that our senior most military officer would alert the target’s command structure if President Trump ordered an attack on China, might also be a symptom of this problem. I will let others decide if this was close to being a Benedict Arnold act. What concerns me even more is that we are meant to have the military subservient to civilian control. We would like to see other countries follow the same practice so that the world not be governed by an international group of military officers.

The current day-to-day political leadership of the country is centered in two places, the senior, unelected, staff in The White House and the aged leadership in the two houses of Congress. We have never seen a less impactful political gang in control of the Presidency, the Senate, the House of Representatives, most lower court judges, most permanent government workers, and the media. The “circular firing squad” they have created suggests they are not ready to govern effectively. For those responsible for planning future investments, this chaos introduces more questions than answers.

The Founding Fathers knew, and many political leaders know that tax legislation is the power to destroy. The current administration’s tax motivation is to deploy tax revenue from the “rich” to pay those with lower wages. One might call these “bribes”, under the theory that these people will show their “gratitude” by voting for the source of their grants. As bad as this is for democracy, it may not be the real motivation. The real motivation might be income tax regulation to destroy or curtail a major source of contributions to the Republican Party. (During our history we have only had income taxes during wartime. Through close to half of our peace time existence, tariffs collected on imports were the main source of running our small national government.) As a matter of financial history, any large-scale deployment of money creates leakage from both sides of the transaction. Some of the leakage will result from inefficiencies created by not having appropriate procedures and some will be easy to plunder. More impactful will be the legal diversion to put elements of income and wealth beyond the scope of the regulations. (The lawyers and accountants will earn their high fees.)

Reactions

This is a continuing movie. While we may think we know the end, we don’t know the timing. Based on history we should now be in the midst of a meaningful correction, although in evaluating the indices it hasn’t really started yet. Only a small minority of stocks in small industries rose this week. 74% of the Wall Street Journal’s list of market changes declined.

One of my worries is that on the Monday the trading markets dropped, I assume a higher than usual portion of the transactions were not reported on the relevant exchanges. One possible indicator is the after-hours price drops. In a list of stocks I am following because my accounts own them or are considering them for future purchase, 31% had further declines of 2.3% to 4.9% below their last sale on their formal markets. I am worried there is not sufficient capital available for the trading desks to absorb a major decline.

Tactics & Strategy

 In terms of trading tactics. After almost every decline there is some sort of price recovery of market averages that takes many stocks near the levels they were selling at immediately before the decline. (Some issues won’t get that bounce.) Certainly, by the second day I would be a seller of any position that I would not choose to own for years into the future.

Strategically, as a long-term investor I would hold positions that should be held for competent heirs until new information questions the long-term, after recognizing the need to pay capital gains. I would also use down markets to look beyond one’s normal comfort zone to broaden the opportunity set.

What do you think?     

   

Did you miss my blog last week? Click here to read.

https://mikelipper.blogspot.com/2021/09/two-confessions-weekly-blog-700.html

https://mikelipper.blogspot.com/2021/09/observations-prior-to-excitement-weekly.html

https://mikelipper.blogspot.com/2021/09/3-thoughts-to-ponder-weekly-blog-698.html

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Investment Lessons from “The Phil,” “The General” and Warren - Weekly Blog # 512

Introduction

I look for valuable investment lessons from exposure rather than only from annual reports, company statements, and the financial media. I often find lessons learned from beyond the investment arena as more meaningful. Over the last weekend I was blessed to have three exposures which gave me valuable insights. The three were: The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, General George Washington, and Warren Buffett.

Investment Lessons from “The Vienna Phil” Friday Night

               

They played an all Brahms Program beautifully.  I will let others in the packed audience comment on his Academic Overture (university drinking songs), eight variations on Haydn’s masterful work, and his long delayed symphony No 1. But sitting in Carnegie Hall Friday night, two important observations came to me. The first with the aid of The Playbill was that it was very difficult to produce high quality music in very different musical formats. In particular, it was said at the time no one liked his first symphony, except that over time it became viewed as the best first symphony ever written. Further, Brahms was considered the best composer of his era and the best successor to Beethoven’s crown.

In thinking about the comments on his work, it is somewhat parallel to what we and many others do in assembling a portfolio of managers or securities. At any given point in time one or more managers or securities fail to do well in the period and we are deemed to be less good investors to those highly concentrated portfolios of only the most winning holdings in the period. From a career risk standpoint we get penalized for this underperformance, yet similar to Brahms, taken overtime the complete work through multiple market cycles can produce much more credible “lifetime” results. The lessons are that diversification can hurt results, particularly in short time periods, and we should therefore pick clients more carefully as to their time frame focus.

In addition, there was another critical observation that came to me Friday night at Carnegie Hall. When I was a college student sitting in the cheap seats in the highest balcony, the audience below looked a bit like a bunch of fury animals, with women and some men encased in full length furs.  Friday night, at one of the highlights of this season’s top concerts, I did not see one human draped in furs. Clearly there has been a major change in the audience’s thinking. It was an important reversal. Sitting there, I started to look for a similar reversal from today’s investment fashion. I began to wonder whether in a number of years “intelligent” portfolios will own index vehicles or even this year’s model of ETF/ETNs? The lesson for all of us is to think what will be different when our children or grandchildren have our investment responsibilities.

“The General” Speaks and Too Few Listen

Each February my wife Ruth and I attend a birthday celebration for President George Washington. This year I had the pleasure to spend some time with a young but noted historian. I asked him about the “Whiskey Rebellion” where President Washington had the task of dealing with an organized bunch of angry western Pennsylvanian farmers. At the urging of Alexander Hamilton, the largest American army formed since the Revolution was raised to deal with the rebellious farmers. I asked the bright historian what was really going on in this rebellion. I knew that the excise tax being levied was a small six to nine cents a gallon. He agreed with me it was not the size of the tax, but the resentment of the western farmers to the easterner’s wealth. (Sounds somewhat familiar to the resentments between the blue and red states today.) Hamilton’s solution through negotiation was to have the central government assume all of the war debts of the various states, which lowered the tax burden of many and led to a sound national debt policy.

The reason for my question is that I am seeing the potential for a surge in indirect taxes. These are sales, use taxes and fees paid to the government. Once these indirect supports to a government are in place they are difficult to reverse, except with enormous popular demand. I am told that today in Egypt they are still collecting an excise tax that that ancient Pharos initiated! My concern is that Federal, State, and Local politicians will gravitate to increased use taxes to reduce any shortfall created by changes in the income tax. For some jurisdictions indirect taxes equal about half of corporate income tax payments.

Many years ago the late chair of the US House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee asked me about his favorite tax raising approach, the Value Added Tax. I replied, did he want to convert US citizens to French citizens who at that time had made an art form of not paying their share of taxes? It did not go forward then, but is being raised again now. I hope we don’t as a nation have to go back to The Boston Tea Party and the Whiskey Rebellion to express our concerns for these sly ways to take more money from us. We need to be on watch.

Warren’s Investment Policy Lesson

As most every investor knows, on Saturday morning Warren Buffett issued his annual letter portion of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report. I believe very few of the media pundits caught what I believe is a very important affirmation to his and Charlie Munger’s thinking. The letter revealed that Berkshire began a slow but deliberate program to eventually buy 80% of Pilot Flying J (PFJ), which has about 750 locations that we used to call truck stops. I am sure that it is a good business, but to me it reinforces what has become a major tenet of their thinking in terms of many of the operations. They seem to be drawn to products that need to be shipped by trucks, trains, or pipelines. While they do own some service companies beyond insurance and finance companies, it seems that goods production and transportation tend to be rather unique vehicles which are often built and owned by entrepreneurial families, which at their current stage are producing excess cash flow to their growing needs. Most of these are domestically located. The greater volume they do, the more closely their results will parallel the Gross Domestic Product, but they will grow faster because of smarter use of leverage and freedom from normal corporate disciplines.

In Conclusion

From a long term investor’s viewpoint there are a lot of positive factors. I am not too concerned that the recent recovery appears to me to be a weak test of the recent lows. I wonder for 2018 whether we have seen both the highs and lows for the year or possibly neither, but in the long run it may not be important either way.

Question: What do you think?     

Pretend & Extend vs. Prediction - Other Lessons from Berkshire-Hathaway

Introduction

A surviving investor is always learning beyond what is the obvious from platform presentations as well as gaining additional insights from past experiences. These are my inputs to today's post as I return from the annual investor conference for Berkshire Hathaway.

Clashes of past with different futures

As almost all the investing world knows there is a five hour question and answer session at the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting which this year probably had an additional 10,000 attendees participating, including many well known value focused investors. If one was paying attention one could hear the clash of the quantitative/accounting approach written about by Warren Buffett's patron saint Ben Graham and a more real world focus on the nature of businesses and focus on people as advocated by Charlie Munger, a proud graduate of Caltech. The clash can be summed up in prior bank mortgage policies of "Pretend & Extend" vs. prediction of meaningful change.

The investment quants believe the future is captured by extended past published earnings reports projected into the future based on today's prices. The genius of the Berkshire Hathaway approach, particularly to acquisitions, is to focus on likely significant future changes. At this year's meeting there was focus on its two regulated activities, the railroad and the utility group. Part of the attraction of these two large and growing investments is that they are major cash users rather than cash generators. 

What Buffett and Munger, the 83 and 90 year young leaders are betting on is that the concerns about climate change will not dampen the world's thirst for liquid energy. The evolutions in the production of oil and natural gas have led to dramatic changes in quantity and processes. The railroad now has nine long tanker trains that can deliver petroleum twice as fast as the pipeline and it has ordered 5,000 new tanker cars and are looking at the possibility of using liquid natural gas to fuel its locomotives.

On the utility side this week Berkshire Hathaway purchased oil transmission pipelines in Alberta, Canada. In addition, it has recently purchased a chemical process that would speed the transmission rate within pipelines. The company is hedging its bets by being one of the largest tax benefitted suppliers of solar and wind power.

Clearly, the favorite mathematical measure that the quants use (extrapolation to determine future valuations) is likely to significantly understate the future value of these operations and for Berkshire Hathaway. In this particular case the predictive method is much more growth oriented than the mathematical models. It is this very specific focus on growth which is the key to likely future general stock market performance.

"Just not yet”

One of the leading theorists that study the market is Jeremy Grantham, who has a generally good but spotty record as a portfolio manager. Grantham believes that the current bull market will have to rise to an S&P 500 level of 2250 from the current level of approximately 1880. Jeremy believes this will happen within the current presidential cycle. He is generally viewed in the investment community as a bear. I find it a bit ironic that while possibly correct at a future peak, his timing may be too long-term.

Regular readers of these posts know that I am obsessed with spotting the next major peak and for our managed accounts, largely avoiding a substantial decline. My studies of past peaks have uncovered many similarities with the current structure of the bond and stock markets except the final parabolic advance. I believe we may be near the launching point of the final spike. We need wide scale public participation to get breakthrough acceleration. 

Typically before a major peak there is a period of almost exhausting enthusiasm which translates into parabolic price rises. Whether a potential 19% rise from the current level qualifies as a parabolic rise is questionable after 30%+ gains in 2013 and more than a double in the five year recovery. However if we look at the potential rate of ascent, a net 1% per day over a trading month might just qualify for the kind of blow-off that characterizes many peaks. If we don't get such a move, I would agree with Jeremy for now, with his belief that we are not yet at peak. However the increase of volume being generated by the more publicly oriented discount brokerage firms that we own in our financial services private fund is something to watch as an enthusiasm indicator.

Further declines in the quality of bank services

All sectors don't peak at the same time. The weekend in Omaha perhaps should be called the “Reunion of Value Investors.” Many of the well known value focused investors were there.  We met with and examined portfolios that like Berkshire and me have substantial positions in financial securities. In most cases (except me) they are in bank shares. We also see this high commitment to banks in the portfolios of many international stock portfolios, particularly if the portfolio managers were trained in Europe.

My concern is that on a longer term basis many banks increasingly rely on administrative services and investing for others as a source of earnings power. In a somewhat misguided rule change, regulators have reduced the potential for capturing yield spreads and at the same time required more isolated capital. Thus, the historic ways banks have to make money have been materially curtailed. As a natural outcome of these pressures on bank profitability, banks have been cutting their personnel rosters, particular trust banks that have less highly profitable loan opportunities.

Until I started to refocus on secondary sources of bank earnings power, I forgot one of my reactions as a young bank trainee at a trust bank. One of my tasks was to remove checks and letters from envelopes addressed to an insurance company's drop box. It was at that time that I recognized that among other things banks were giant paper processors. They remain paper/data mills as they process clearing and settlements, making transactions in securities, currencies, and structured loans. Years ago the banks had armies of clerks and support people to carry out these activities efficiently and safely. In the intervening years much, but not all of the work was automated. However, I fear that because of the combination of the elimination of some competition as well as the probable narrowing of the profitability of foreign exchange and structured loans utilizing LIBOR and related indices, some major banks have been forced to cut administrative and investment staffs. While some of these people may have been excess, I am predicting future bank services clients will be disappointed and their reliance on past experience will be similar to an analyst using extrapolation as a principal decision tool. We predict there is a good chance that the quality of bank services is likely to decline.  Don’t say that you weren't warned.

Questions of the week:

What predictions are you making that are contra to extrapolation?

Have you noticed a decline in the quality service you have been receiving from banks?

Please privately share your thoughts with me.

_____________________     

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